With the widespread use of brushless motors, many methods and devices fulfilling this function are known from the prior art.
More recently, these devices and methods also concern reversible electricity generators, that is to say those functioning both as an alternator and as a starter.
A method of controlling an alternator starter is for example described in the patent application FR2854746 by the company Valeo Equipments Electriques Moteur.
According to this patented method, the synchronisation signals issuing from the sensors determining the angular position of the rotor of the machine are out of phase in order to control the phases of the armature sequentially.
The phase-difference angle of the signals is chosen so as to control the torque according to the speed and to adapt it to the operating mode, in particular either as a starter or as an auxiliary motor.
To do this a microcontroller interfaced with a digital to analogue converter and operational amplifiers effects, in order to generate each out-of-phase signal, a linear combination of the synchronisation signals where the sum of the coefficients is zero.
The optimisation of the alternator starter described in particular in the document FR2854746 led Valeo to implement, on programmable components, in replacement for the system functioning in mixed mode, a fully digital general method that was the object of the conjoint patent application entitled “Method and device for generating out-of-phase signals and use thereof”.
The method described in this conjoint application is general in so far as the phase-difference angle of the signals is a variable exogenous to the system rather than a variable acting in the control loop of the machine.
This method will not be described in detail in the present application, the description of the conjoint application being introduced here in its entirety for all useful references.